This is interesting...

Is it only me...but the Tax Apparatchiks didn’t need to do this.

One day last week I got home to find a letter from the Her Maj’s Tax Apparatchiks awaiting my return from a hard day at the coal face trying to earn enough money to pay my taxes to keep this country afloat and awash with hospitals, schools and benefit payments. It was therefore with a sense of trepidation, fear and concern that I opened the letter from Her Maj’s people.

Surely they don’t want more bawbees from me was my instinctive response? Have I not yet fully paid for the local hospital I never use? How many more Apparatchiks’ pensions must I now fund?

You can therefore imagine my delight, pleasure and surprise to be informed that instead of me giving yet more of my hard earned money to the Two Caesars and their legions of Apparatchiks, it had been decided that they owed me. It wasn’t much but in these straightened times every little helps and in my mind I am far better positioned to spend my money more efficiently than some cosseted Apparatchik.

I was a little puzzled as to why I deserved such largesse especially as I was sure that dealings between me and the Tax Apparatchik were all square. You can be assured that I promptly pay every bawbee that I am required by current tax legislation to pay.

And therein lay the problem. I had paid all that was owed promptly. Indeed I had paid too promptly, well in advance of the deadline and therefore I was owed interest.

Now it might only be me but this is an absolute nonsense.

You may have guessed by now that I am not a huge big fan of being deprived of money I have worked hard to earn by whichever lot is in power. (You may have inferred this conclusion by reading between the lines of my writings and musings-and you would be right.)

Notwithstanding this however I do accept the need to pay whatever taxes I am owed and as it suits me to settle up at the earliest opportunity that is what I do. I do not expect to be recompensed or incentivised for doing this. If I wish to pay early then surely all should applaud that-at least it means we don’t have to go cap and hand to borrow from the Chinese to pay for our schools, hospitals, pensions and benefits.

And we also have the rule of double jeopardy at work here-I get some money unexpectedly back and the Apparatchiks have to spend even more money calculating, raising and processing the refund which would far outstrip the face value of the cheque, given the cost of Apparatchiks these days.

No, the money would have been better spent reducing the cost of the National Debt rather than giving me the liquid funds to buy a coffee.
But I did keep the money! Even though this is a national scandal.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Playing the blues

Is it only me....but even Blue Noses need to pay their taxes.

Now as you might know I originally come from a Celtic Northern Tribe living far to the north of The Wall of Hadrian, from a city dominated by its soccer teams, the Hoops or the Bhoys and the Gers, whose supporters are known affectionally as Blue Noses.

It is important to state for readers of these words, and for those north of the Wall of Hadrian these things are important, that by birth, pedigree and inclination I am a Blue Nose though these days I am a Blue Nose Lite with strong liberal tendencies which is a contradiction in terms to the Blue Nose Taliban.

And for the education of others bemused by what I am talking about, you can never be a Blue Nose or a Bhoy. You have to choose at birth and stick with it. And for many, birth chooses you as a Bhoy or Blue Nose. I hope you following this.

But moving on.

It will not have escaped your attention that in recent days the Gers, or Rangers FC to give them their Sunday name, has gone into administration owing a significant sum of money, and we are talking many millions here, to the Tax Apparatchiks.

This is big bad news. Not just for all who play for and work at the Gers; not just for the legions of Blue Noses worldwide spread like a contagion by the Diaspora to every far flung corner of the world; not just for Scottish football which requires the Gers and the Bhoys to be strong and powerful to keep the money flowing in to support every man, woman, boy and girl who plays the game north of the border; but for the very psyche of the Scots people as it approaches the 700th Anniversary of Bannockburn when it sent the English hordes back home to think again and as it stands on the threshold of independence.

You think I’m kidding.

It is said that the first devolution vote was lost in 1979 because of the damage to our psyche, whatever that might be, caused by the dismal failure of Ally McLeod and his team of Scottish football no hopers to bring home the World Cup from Argentina in 1978. Soccer is that big a deal to us.

Now clearly the Gers could have avoided their wee problem with the Tax Apparatchiks by buying them lunch as some banks and mobile phone companies are alleged to have done. Either the situation was so dire that the Gers did not even have enough loose change or luncheon vouchers lying around to run to lunch; or the Head Tax Apparatchik was a Bhoys fan and hell would have to freeze over before he would be seen tucking in with a Blue Nose.

I have not heard this claimed yet but it won’t be long before we hear a Blue Nose blubbing and greeting (which means crying not saying hello) that his beloved Gers has been made bust for sectarian reasons. And I wouldn’t bet against the religious beliefs of the key Tax Apparatchiks being investigated. Let us hope and pray they are Jewish.

I have however started to hear a few bleeding heart commentators and politicians start to claim special case status for the Gers and requesting that the Tax Apparatchiks go easy on them.

Now it might only be me but this is wrong. Day in, day out the Tax Apparatchiks are taking businesses of all shapes and sizes to court for not paying their tax bills and for taking steps to evade, not avoid, tax. And every day as a result businesses either write large cheques which pays for our schools, hospitals and Apparatchik pensions, or they go bust. And every time a company goes bust there is a human dimension.

It is no different for the Gers. And nor should it have been any different for Vodafone, Goldman Sachs and anyone else who escaped paying their due tax in return for lunch. Just because you employ 11 men who kick a ball around every Saturday does not give you special exemption. After all our schools, hospitals and Apparatchik pensions still need to be paid.

It will be a tragedy if the long history of the Gers should end, in the words of T S Elliott, ‘not with a bang but with a whimper’ but we can’t keep on making special cases. Every case is special to someone. And there is no way that chasing a ball can be deemed a special case.

If there is anyone out there who thinks otherwise please let me know.

And to every Blue Nose out there, and remember before you send the boys round, that includes me, have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Taxing times

Is it only me...but this man has done nothing wrong...another one.

This has not been a good week for those of us trying to run businesses and doing our best to build customer focused enterprises.

Firstly Stephen Hester takes a kicking for having the nerve to take what he is entitled to; then, despite my pleas to the contrary, the Apparatchiks egged on by the Two Caesars and the Last Lot, decide to treat Sir Fred Goodwin in the same way as Anthony Blunt, Robert Mugabe and Nicolae Ceausescu and give him a right going over for doing the right thing for his shareholders; and now Ed Lester, CEO at the Student Loans Company, is being pummelled because he took action to minimise his tax bill, legally.

It is time to put an end to this hysterical lynch mob and learn to revere and respect our business leaders before they decide to jack it all in and retreat to living on benefits, albeit if they are capped at £34,000 gross.

All of us want to pay less tax. And many of us take whatever actions we can take to minimise the tax avoidance opportunities available to us. We save through tax free ISAa. We invest in tax free pensions. We optimise the tax benefits from things like nursery vouchers and the like. And don’t we all take of advantage of every allowance going that will reduce our tax bill. All perfectly legal and above board.

And this is all that Ed Lester did. He took perfectly sensible steps to minimise his tax bill. So why the fuss?

It is also worth pointing out that lest anyone think that Mr Lester is not paying any tax whatsoever, he will be paying VAT on any fees he receives, corporation tax on profits from his own private company and income tax on any dividends or salary payments he receives from said company. He will be responsible for his own pension provision and will not be entitled to any of the company perks and conditions of service that many of us think of as a right of employment. So it’s swings and roundabouts for Mr Lester.

And to make matters worse, parliamentary time is being used up to discuss and debate this issue. The Public Accounts Committee is to investigate. And Treasury Apparatchiks are combing every nook and cranny at our expense trying to work out who said what to whom and when. All perfectly acceptable actions to take if wrong doing was involved but while tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance is not.

Yet again another innocent man is hounded and pilloried and torn apart by a pack of political wolfhounds. Do you think our political elite might be trying to deflect attention from something? I wonder.

It might only be me but I would like to suggest that since this man and the other businessmen mentioned above had done nothing wrong, that our Politicos stop hounding those who are trying to do the right thing and they start to focus on the issues of import that I am paying you to address. And that does not include chocolate oranges, totally legal business behaviours or wonky weather.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.